Spinal column: traveller’s tales

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‘In the hotel lobby, I find I am the same height as an average suitcase. But less manoeuvrable’

Melanie Reid broke her neck and back falling from a horse in April 2010.
She spent 12 months in rehab and is now tetraplegic.

After many years of mocking Edinburgh’s naive and plentiful tourists, I
suppose they had to get their revenge. When, recently, I was dispatched to
the Open golf championship, the only disabled room within a 50-mile radius
was in the central Edinburgh hotel legendary for its och-aye-the-noo, tartan
kitsch, herding visitors like sheep off coaches to the sound of bagpipes…
and, well, you’ve got the picture. Haggis ’em in, haggis ’em out.